


One of Those White-Line Boys

by orphan_account



Series: Inclinations [2]
Category: due South
Genre: M/M, One Night Stand, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 13:47:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wanted to redeem something a bit more hopeful out of "A Question of Inclination," and this is what I came up with.  Aside from a poorly disguised Ray Kowalski, there's another canonical "due South" character in here you may choose to recognize or not.</p><p>Also, there is a racial slur which is treated with the contempt it deserves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One of Those White-Line Boys

**Author's Note:**

> I'm putting this as "inspired by" one of my own stories, because it's not really a series as such, but it doesn't really stand alone either. The original work does. I hope that's not considered tacky, because it's the best way I can describe the relationship between the two stories.

I’d been separated from my wife for about three months.  Technically, it was a trial separation, but we both knew it was for keeps.  Linda knew she’d never really had my complete attention, and once I knew that she knew, there was really no point in pretending.

She was pretty cool about the whole thing.  We’d been together since high school and, for both of us, marriage had seemed like something inevitable, something we had to do.  I think everyone in the neighborhood was surprised that our first kid, my gorgeous little Sandra Marie, was born over a year after the reception at the Knights of Columbus hall. 

We had two more kids after that, first Rita (we’d been praying for three years after Sandra for another), then Dominick (wouldn’t have been my first choice for a name, but it was for Linda’s grandfather, unquestionably the coolest cat ever to come out of Calabria, who was on his deathbed and we would’ve done anything to make him happy; mission accomplished just in time I’m happy to say).

It all got to be too much for Linda, though, who saw the way I looked at other guys, and also saw how the wind was blowing across America.  She set me free, as painlessly as possible, and made sure no one in the family, or outside of it, gave me any shit over anything.  The woman is a saint, and as soon as I run across a guy who’ll treat her right, a guy who doesn’t just love women (hey, I love women, my sisters, my aunts, my mother, Linda, my daughters) but _loves_ women, will make love to them (to _Linda_ ) the way they deserve, delighting in them, in their bodies, instead of thinking about something else entirely during, as my (former) priest would say, “the marital act” (he was kinda pre-Vatican II), I’m sending him to Linda so fast both their heads will spin.

But this is about the first crazy weeks after the separation, when my own head was spinning with possibilities.  Sure, the efficiency Linda’s best friend (another saint among women) found for me sucked, and I missed my kids like crazy, but I also had this _freedom_ I’d never known before.  I managed to find a fairly respectable bar, and then this guy.

He had crazy blond hair, sticking up all over the place, dressed about two steps up from hobo, was probably in his early forties, not much older than me, and something about him said “cop” to me (I’m an accountant, what do I know about cops, except this guy was definitely one).  But he moved easily through the room, not like he was Vice, and Vice hasn’t hassled bars just for being queer for awhile (sure, accountant, but I know enough to ask around and stay away from drug bars).  He angled himself next to me, used his Labatt bottle to indicate my left hand, which bore a tan line from my wedding ring like a brand.  “Divorce.  It’s a real bitch, ain’t it?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I agreed.  But because I could never bear anyone to speak ill of Linda, I added, “But not literally.  My ex-wife, soon to be, is a real peach.  I think she, ya know, knew before I did.”

And the guy grinned, and if there hadn’t been a warmth in the way the skin around his eyes crinkled with his smile, I might have been scared of him.  As it was, I was interested.  Very interested.

“To understanding ex-wives,” he said, and clinked his bottle against my glass of burgundy.  He took a sip of his beer.  “Mine…she was great.  I didn’t handle the breakup well, practically stalked her for like a year.”

That was not a story I ever expected to hear in a gay bar.  “Really?”  He seemed so…comfortable in this bar.

“It was awhile ago.  We’re friends now,” he said, but there was a shadow in his voice.  Now, looking back, now that I’ve got my own guy, I know he was probably thinking of her still, or maybe thinking of someone else he couldn’t have.  Back then, I didn’t care.

“Well, okay,” I said.

He visibly shook off the memory.  “First time in a place like this?” he asked.

“Damn, and here I thought I was a smooth operator,” I said, unoffended.  No shame in being a rookie, even at my age.

“Coast to coast, LA to Chicago,” he joked back.  And he made it all so…easy.  We went to a motel (not the efficiency, my kids played "the floor is made of lava" there), but it didn’t seem sleazy at all.  He had me stripped and out on the bed in no time flat, and I didn’t know enough to think it was weird that he still had most of his clothes on.

And he was all over me, like he was starved for it.  His clothes rubbed up on my skin, sometimes even abrading it, but it all felt so good, to be finally under a man, all bones made angular by sparse flesh and rough skin, that I wasn’t about to complain.

In fact, I was turned on like crazy, wanting it so bad, except I wasn’t even sure what “it” was.  He kissed me, and it was rough, but I gave as good as he took, and finally he pulled back and got naked, too.  I know now that it was somehow important to him that I was good and turned on before he would let me see him like that, but I still don’t know why.  Some guys, with my guy it’s sometimes like that, it’s a power thing, but I honestly don’t know what it was with this guy.  Maybe it was a power trip, but maybe it was something else, like he was almost afraid of being naked, like it was too much for him.  This is all after-the-fact conjecture.  I’ve talked it over with my guy, partly because it was important to the overall path that got me to him, partly because my telling the story revs him up.

Once he was naked, though, this guy, and I didn’t even know his name, he said to call him “Ben,” but even as a fiscally conservative accountant, I’d lay money that wasn’t his real name, went to town on me.  He was intense and everywhere, all at once, with his long and elegant hands, with his vocal and talented mouth, and it wasn’t like anything I’d felt before.

As a first time, it was perfect.  As for a second time…I knew there wouldn’t be a second time.

No shocker, I never saw him again.  I met my guy not too long after that, at some dive comedy club.  Turned out he was one of the co-owners, and while most of my family hated that I ended up with another man, and a Black man at that (and an ex-cop, but that whole deal is a story for another time), Linda’s never batted an eye, except at my more judgmental relatives.  She’s still not speaking to Aunt Lucia after that jungle bunny comment.  Neither am I.

And Sandra Marie’s writing her senior thesis about Black-owned banks in Chicago in the Depression, and my guy has relatives who knew guys who knew guys, and it’s all bringing us closer together.

And sometimes I think back to that guy, “Ben” with his Labatt’s and his intensity, and I’m so fucking grateful I wish I knew him, could write him a thank you for graphically showing me that what I wanted wasn't wrong, wasn't impossible.  And if one of my guy’s old buddies, from his days when he was a cop, kinda looks like that guy if I squint and tilt my head, I’ll never mention it, because _that_ guy’s named Ray, not Ben.


End file.
